


The Aftermath Of Love

by Frumion_III



Series: A Boy Who Made All The Wrong Choices. [4]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Fandom, Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Dark Magic, Depression, Eating Disorders, M/M, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, War, Wizarding World, self hatred, wizarding world harry potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 13:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frumion_III/pseuds/Frumion_III
Summary: While Gellert Grindelwald throws himself into his work and disappears into his own mind Albus is left to deal with the aftermath of Arianna's death. With a coffin-side brawl and a house filled with memories and ghosts how will he deal with the silence?





	The Aftermath Of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Do take this warning seriously. 
> 
> This may trigger anyone who has or has had suicidal thoughts or an eating disorder therefor I don't recommend reading it if any of the above applies to you. I have done my level best to describe grief and desolation as I have experienced it, and don't want this to hurt any of you. 
> 
> That being said, read on if you will.

Clutching his broken nose, Albus tried to avoid getting blood on either the coffin he was standing next to or his white shirt. He could feel the appalled stares being directed at him and Aberforth, but Albus couldn’t bring himself to care. Before the summer — before Gellert — he would have tried his hardest to appear as calm and collected as possible, but now everything had changed and he had no spare energy to offer. He would have tried to comfort his brother, tried to set their differences aside, but now he no longer had the strength to even attempt a conversation. Aberforth stood by the coffin, brooding and angry. He was taller than Albus and stronger physically, acting as if the blood on his knuckles was the most natural thing in the world, and in that moment Albus hated him. 

The service finished and Albus put on a show of being thankful for the other attendees’ condolences, gritted his teeth and bore one pitying stare after another while blood dripped down his face and the pain in his nose throbbed as the skin began to bruise a deep purple. Gellert would have known the spell to fix it. The thought came unbidden and Albus tried to shove it back behind the wall he had put up inside his mind, but he could not. He had tried everything to block away the bond, the ever taut pull that connected him to Gellert in body, magic and soul, but he had been able to do nothing. Eventually, when the raw hurt that echoed down the bond from Gellert’s side had become too much, he had occluded that part of his mind in the hope that it would hurt less. It muted the pain, dulled his senses and required a not insubstantial amount of his magic to maintain constantly, but it was better than feeling Gellert’s constant sense of loss on top of his own pain. Gingerly he touched the skin of his nose and pain shot through his whole head again, and he flinched, unwilling to admit how useful the physical pain was in distracting him from the bond’s ache. 

As he sat by Arianna’s grave, now alone with his thoughts, he tried to forget the words that were still haunting him. “It was Aberforth that cast the curse, not me.” Again and again he heard Gellert’s last desperate attempt to defend himself. It echoed through him whenever there was a quiet moment, and with his last remaining family determined to hate him until the school term started, quiet moments weren’t hard to find.  
“What would you want me to do Ari?” He said, his shoulders slumping as he wavered, indecision gripping him with claws that sunk deep into his mind, throwing everything about the aftermath of the duel into doubt. The grave remained silent, his frail little sister’s laughter silenced forever, and he choked back another sob. Unable to bear another moment in the company of the ill-fitting headstone, Albus turned away and began to walk towards the cottage in the hills for the first time since Gellert had left. 

Sometimes it seemed like it had been forever since Gellert had disappeared, sometimes it felt like a heartbeat, but however long it had been, nothing could have soothed the sharp jab of pain Albus felt reading the message that his lover had carved into the door. There was so much pain, so much hope that it overwhelmed Albus, leaving him hollow and wondering if he had made the right choice. Shocked at himself, he flinched, pushing the thought away as he had done with so many others since that fateful day. Gellert had attacked his brother, broken Aberforth’s arm and acted like he’d done nothing wrong and then he’d killed his sister. He didn’t deserve Albus’ forgiveness. In a fit of fury Albus tapped the door with his wand and tried to remove the words with a cleaning charm. It didn't work. He tried a scouring charm next but that too did nothing, and Albus growled. Hurling a vanishing spell, he watched as the door slowly melted into nothingness, but to his horror the message hung there, burnt into the air where the door had stood a moment before. He let out an inarticulate scream of rage and attempted to move the letters away, a flick of his wand sending them spinning into the roof where they settled against the wood paneling as if they had been burnt there originally. Albus closed his eyes, sudden rage draining out of him as he wondered, almost against his will how Gellert had charmed his message to do that. 

The room looked bare, as if half the contents had disappeared, and Albus realised with a start how much of Gellert had found its way into the space that they’d shared so much in. The cork boards they’d found together at a market looked empty without Gellert’s notes scattered across them, the bookshelves half full and the desk unnaturally tidy without his things where they should be. No, Albus corrected himself viciously, where they would have been. He noticed something odd then, walking towards the desk in disbelief he took in the sad little pile of books. Gellert had cut them in half, all the muggle books he had so loved when Albus had given them to him sat in two neat piles, a diagonal cut across each cover that tore something in Albus’ chest to see. “Reparo.” He said, the word repeated over the pile of corpses he had been left. Gellert had modified that spell to become unbreakable, his fourth dimension proof changing everyday spell use all over the globe. Albus bit the inside of his lip, hurt blooming across his face as he fought to keep hold of the memory of what Gellert had done, struggling against the thought of his smile, his laugh, his academics, all of which threatened to wash away Arianna’s death into insignificance. 

As the books stitched themselves back together at the command of his magic he retched, wondering how much hatred Gellert had disguised from him, how much of his lover he had wilfully blinded himself to. In a dark attempt to push away the suffocatingly fond memories he had of the boy who had torn the last of his family apart he conceded that maybe Aberforth was right. Gellert really was a monster. “Who are you and what have you done with my dearest Albus.” in spite of himself Gellert’s words came back to him then, the amused tone trapped in the amber eternity of a day gone by, the memory of the smile that had accompanied the joke cutting Albus to the quick. “He would never be caught agreeing with anything his stupid little brother said.” Albus almost laughed at the thought before a sob forced its way up his throat instead. Everything they’d had was gone. 

He conjured ice and applied it to his bruise, the stain that had begun as a purple mark was now deepening into an ugly mottling of mauve and blue, the snapped bones having settled out of alignment and destroyed the symmetry of his face. Catching sight of a wreath of white jasmine flowers he frowned, bringing up his wand to remove the preservation charms he’d cast on them before everything went to hell. Then he paused and the counter-spell’s incantation died on his lips even as he tried to muster up the strength to burn this last bridge. He couldn't watch as the only physical memory of the most amazing evening he’d ever had crumbled to dust under accelerated decay, he thought, anger pulsing hot through his veins once more at his own weakness, but still he stayed his hand. The smell of jasmine seemed suddenly inescapable, and without knowing when he had begun to cry Albus wiped his face, the sleeves of his pressed funeral robes glistening with mucus as they absorbed the stream of tears falling from his eyes. 

With streaming eyes Albus cleared the shelves, his books packing themselves into a large pile that he shrunk down and put into one of his pockets as he collected and shrank his writing things. He almost shrank down the desk before suddenly remembering the way he had held Gellert against it and whispered words of love and lust into the air between them, ink shattering against the floor as he carelessly gave away his heart, and then jerked away from it as if burnt. He picked up the wreath of jasmine flowers and raised his hand once more to destroy it but found himself unable to go through with his plan. Flowers in hand, he vanished the shelves Gellert had added years ago, before he even knew who Albus was, and walked out of the room, pulling the roof down as he walked down the steps curling around the outside of the cottage. A sudden memory leapt at him as he looked back at it from a distance and he sobbed. Even from the beginning, when he’d found the tumbledown cottage and his study had been nothing more than a tin box full of arithmancy notes, it had been as much Gellert’s place as his. How many hours had he spent tracing the spiky red handwriting that had corrected his notes? How much time had he spent wondering who it had been that gave him such a wonderful place to escape to when his family got too unbearable? How much did he owe the man who had killed his little sister? With a flick of his wand the cottage that held all of his best memories imploded, the wood and stone bending and shattering under the force of his raw pain as he turned away from the sight and began the journey back towards Godrick’s Hollow. 

On September the first Albus didn’t go to King’s Cross. He didn’t go to see Aberforth off, he didn’t wave goodbye and he didn’t feel any more or less alone now that his only living relative was six hundred miles away. He did however wake up in his bedroom with the high warlock of all hangovers, and wondered how Gellert could be thoughtless enough to get so drunk when he knew full well both of them would feel the pain of it the following morning. Albus woke feeling as if his mouth day been burnt, the taste of some kind if herb just tangible underneath the overriding flavour of strong spirits, and he wondered idly what Gellert had been drinking before chiding himself for the pointless thought. It hardly mattered after all, and it wasn’t like he’d find out so there was no sense in thinking about it. 

Weeks fell through each other in their hurry to pass Albus by and his nose healed, purple fading to a yellow-green that was still painful to the touch and eventually to nothing, his nose crooked in two places where the bone had healed badly. He barely moved, not even able to rouse himself to change his clothes or resize the books he’d brought back from the cottage and unable to dredge up the motivation to walk to the shop for food. He shuffled from room to room flinching at the memories that lay in wait as he crossed every threshold. He could barely breathe without smelling jasmine even though he hadn’t seen any after that day when he’d repaired Gellert’s books, unable to lie in his own bed without the memories of Gellert underneath him, next to him, on top of him crushing the breath from his lungs and pulling half aborted sobs from his throat. The kitchen too was haunted, his mother screaming at him, his sister crying, Gellert’s sudden violent wrath. All of them were there every time he looked through the corners of his eyes, but no. They were gone. He didn’t know which thought he preferred. 

Arianna’s room was the hardest to walk through, the mementoes of a life half lived hurtful to look at. The more he noticed the more he cried. He should have stood up for her when their mother had hidden her away, locked her out of the life they shared. She’d never seen diagon alley. He should have payed more attention to her as a child, but he’d been too wrapped up in his own glory to care about his squib sister and the way his mother treated her. Then his mother had died and Albus had felt Arianna’s happiness, noticed how her fits became less frequent after the one that had shredded their mother, and been repulsed by it. She’d killed their mother, and she was walking around the house with a faint but steady smile. She’d never been to King’s Cross. He’d forgotten, in his own twisted mourning, how she used to cry about never being allowed to come on family outings, and now she was dead too. She’d never cast a spell. Albus should have been kinder to her. Gellert had always been kind, even before they had known each other properly. He’d given her the end of a candle to read by, and now as Albus walked through the memories of his lost family he was overcome with guilt. The man who had killed Arianna had done more for her than he ever really had. He had been too bitter, to resentful of her as the reason that he couldn't escape Godrick’s Hollow, he had forgotten the person she was beneath that. She hadn't even seen the sea. And now she was dead. Albus ended up walling her room off in grief, the dust gathering on her books and toys until it seemed as if even the room was wearing a mourning veil. 

Pain tore through him, rousing him from the dry eyed despair he had been staring at the ceiling in and shattering the carefully built occlumency barrier between his mind and the full force of the emotions emanating through the bond. His knee shattered, reformed, echoing Gellert’s pain, his mouth suddenly on fire with the flavour of firewhiskey as he keened in agony. The bond. Gellert was hurt. Without thinking about it he threw on some semi-acceptable clothes haphazardly and let the magic of the bond pull him through space, directing his apparition to where the other side of the bond called from. He opened his eyes to see a wide amphitheatre with rock walls and a high ceiling shrouded in darkness. Down on the sand Gellert stood, wand raised against a giant of a man and cursed him, his response perfect despite the pain they both felt. The violence with which he responded held Albus breathless, suddenly understanding how much he’d been holding back the day when everything had ended. Watching Gellert fight was magnetic, attractive. He was graceful and lethal, falling to the floor as if in pain only to charm a wave out of the sand and snatch victory from the grim jaws of defeat. Albus watched, enchanted and repelled, afraid and unwillingly aroused until something tugged roughly in his chest and Gellert looked up, the silver and black eyes meeting his for a moment that seemed to last forever until he wrenched his gaze away, turning and walking through the doors before he could apperate back to the house he so loathed. He found that he was crying and shaking, his numb existence shaken by seeing Gellert again. He walked into the kitchen and flinched, the shade of Gellert standing there with a smile on his face as he calmly broke Aberforth’s arm before he blinked the harsh truth of the memory away, wishing that he hadn’t seen Gellert’s brutal fight. 

When the first letter came it sat, unopened on the floor for two days before Albus noticed it. When he did it took all of his strength to leave it there unread. He couldn’t take any more of the pain Gellert had caused him. He drifted into the kitchen and ignored the slumped form of Arianna, knowing that if he tried to look at her fully the grey figure would disappear. Other vague hallucinations flitted at the edges of his vision but he simply sighed, unmoved by their regular appearances now that he’d gown so used to them. He poured himself coffee when it boiled and summoned the last of his tinned peaches, not bothering to clean a plate and tasting ash as the coffee woke him up a little, forcing him into a slightly more aware state. He instantly regretted making it and poured the rest down the sink, rubbing a spoon clean and carrying the tin of peaches up to his room with an inaudible sigh that failed to disturb the silence that lay thick on every surface, twin to the dust building up around him. 

When the Arithmancer’s Almanac arrived he burnt it without even looking at the front cover, the subject too painfully reminiscent of Gellert to bear thinking about. He didn’t notice the title as it burnt. When the latest issue of The New Alchemist arrived he almost burnt that too, deciding on a whim to read though a few pages first. It might help. It might give him something to think about other than the ghosts and memories that infested every breath he took. The front page looked interesting, the title grabbing his attention and making him feel alive for the first time since his sister had died. Eternal fire in a portable floo. It was all impossible. He took a deep breath in, his lungs feeling less like crumpled paper and broken glass and more like what they were supposed to, and read on. He marvelled at the elegant proof, agreed with the journal’s assessment that the discoverer would become legend, and then he noticed the name beneath the article. “This astonishing discovery belongs to the up and coming arithmancer Gellert Grindelwald, a young man who has revolutionised more than one field of magic in his short years.” His breath was pulled from him in a pained rush. 

Albus was caught between a deeply painful hurt that Gellert had forgotten him so soon, that he’d been able to just move on and do something like this, and awe. He tired not to feel the familiar flush of heat at Gellert’s brilliance, but he couldn't help it. Gellert had done the impossible yet again, and he loved it. He loved the way Gellert’s mind worked, loved the elegance of the theory he had used to shatter one of the most basic laws of elemental magic, and despite everything found the uniquely beautiful intelligence of his ex-lover stunningly attractive. He retched, guilt consuming him as he opened the letter Gellert had sent, unable to help himself as the pain of what Gellert had done to him faded, momentarily subsumed by the wretched love he knew he had no right to feel. “Dearest Albus.” His handwriting blurred beneath a film of tears that Albus couldn't stop and he watched as the writing smudged, his salty tears blotching across the paper. With a trembling hand he wiped away his tears and began to read. 

‘I wake thinking of your eyes and fall asleep to memories of your embrace. Do you still dream of me?’

The last line of the letter tangled in his mind and pulled at him, tugged on his heartstrings and brought fresh tears to his eyes, the answer pulsing through his blood and singing in his ears even as he folded the letter up and put the envelope back on the floor where it had rested since it had shot through his fireplace. Yes. Every fibre of his being ached with the answer, his magic rising like a tide as he felt the broken part of his soul sing with glee, the bond warming in his chest until he felt like he was glowing with the strength of it. Yes. He fell back towards the bed, exhaustion suddenly gipping his mind in a vice. The warmth drained from him as he saw Arianna fall again in his mind’s eye and he knew in that moment that he could not reply to the letter. 

The following morning he rose and summoned the books Gellert had left behind. It wasn’t a response, not really, he’d convinced himself that it wouldn't count as a reply. He parcelled up all of the muggle gifts he’d given his lover and then repaired so painstakingly while echoes of pain emanated from his broken nose, then pushed the stack through the fireplace with a pinch of floo powder to merlin knew where. He hadn’t moved when the fireplace had flared green again, a messily scrawled letter without an envelope falling into his lap before he had time to leap out of the way and almost before he knew what he was doing he’d began to read. It was a list of questions, a vain, hopeful attempt to convince Albus to respond, and it almost worked. He was reaching for a pen and paper, the words he would respond with already writing themselves inside his mind before he lurched back, guilt ripping a fresh hole in what was left of his heart. How could he? This was Arianna’s murderer. He ignored the small voice saying that it had been an accident and let the page of writing flutter to the floor, trying not to drown in memories of that handwriting scrawling an amendment to his notes, and everything he had loved about it’s creator. He couldn’t feel that way about him, not anymore. It was wrong. 

When the third letter arrived Albus looked down at where it had fallen with no expression, unable to do anything but stare at it. He was jolted out of his blank eyed reverie by the jangling tone of the doorbell. He brushed past the bricked up doorway to Arianna’s room on his way to the door and flinched away from her shade on the bend of the stairs, the worn smile she wore disappearing with the rest of her as he turned the corner. 

He pulled the deadbolt back warily and opened the door to see Bathilda, his face crumpling as he realised that this was the first time since before the end of everything that he’d seen her. Her face softened and she pulled him into a hug, then moved past him into the hall. She said nothing about the state of the house, only tapping things with her wand. Bathilda walked through each room on the ground floor repairing what was broken, cleaning what was dirty and putting to rights what had been strewn across the floor in one of Albus’ fits of despair. He opened his mouth to say thank you, to speak for the first time in months and then panicked, unable to find his voice. Bathilda made her way upstairs and looked down at him sadly when she saw what he’d done to the door, Albus meeting her gaze unflinchingly from the bottom of the stairs. When she returned and sat down in the clean kitchen Albus found it hard to look at her, sure she would begin offering meaningless condolences, but she simply took his hand in hers comfortingly. 

Her skin was soft and dry, almost parchment-like under Albus’ fingers, and in the end it was him that spoke first. “Tha- Thank you.” It was a quiet thing, barely audible and drowning in the silence as soon as it left his lips. Bathilda nodded, then noticed that something had changed in his face and leaned forward, looking at him searchingly before she broke the silence that was threatening to suffocate him.  
“You are not alone child.” She said, her voice ringing clear and cracking the silence like an egg, spilling through the house in a sudden storm as she offered her comforting smile. “Feel free to come to mine to eat if you’re short of food.” She added, then smiled and shook her head. “Not free. I know what it is to be your age. Obligated. You should feel obligated to come to me for dinner at least once every three days.” Albus smiled and nodded, appreciating the direct set of instructions but unable to muster the energy to say anything in response. He was inordinately grateful that she’d offered what she had, but he had forgotten how to speak. Bathilda got up and gave him another pressing hug before leaving and Albus felt himself crumple against the door when she left. The silence descended once more. 

Months drifted past and Albus dutifully went round to have dinner with Bathilda every three days but what he tasted never changed. Ash, bitter and cold on his tongue, and he ate less and less as time progressed. He looked into the mirror on the seventh of November to find that he had grown almost painfully thin, his cheekbones jutting out like knives below the hollows of his eyes. His skin looked waxy and his ribs were frighteningly visible through the skin of his chest, but Albus realised with a slight start that he didn’t care. The letters had piled up, all untouched, left to carpet the floor of his room where they landed. It was the one thing Bathilda hadn’t touched in all of her valiant efforts to help him and he didn’t know whether he should be thankful or resentful of that fact. At first each letter brought with it a burn of anger and love, self loathing and grief but after they began to cover his floorboards he grew apathetic to them. All of his feelings seemed muted as he utilised his occlumency to avoid dealing with anything and everything, and even the sight of his damaged reflection couldn't rouse much more than a flicker of interest in his once bright eyes. 

Brighton pier looked strange when Albus went to see it’s opening day on the fifteenth of November, the new structure jutting out into the sea and then ending abruptly without rhyme or reason, pulling a strangled laugh from Albus as he realised the irony. Here he was, also going nowhere. Dressed in layers upon layers to hide the emaciation of his frame and prevent a chill, Albus walked along the pier later as the grey light began to fade with no particular drive, admiring the inanely pointless architecture of the muggle world and wondering what it was all for. The wooden slats of the pier creaked in the wind, and Albus walked to the wrought iron railings as if in a trance. He tasted salt and drank in the sounds of the sea, the loud crash of breakers and the harsh sound of beach stones clacking together as they were thrown about by the tide reassuring him that sounds still existed. The ocean seemed so loud, the odd collection of noises calling to him in a language that he couldn’t understand and quite without meaning to he let the steady sounds of the ocean wash away his mental barriers. 

Had he made the right choice? The uncertainty came crashing back into him and he frantically tried to build up the walls he’d been lulled into collapsing himself by the strangely magnetic call of the sea. It had been beautiful, what he and Gellert had had. A beautiful dream, so wildly brilliant that it couldn’t have been real. The bond in his chest burned, the pain slamming into him now that his painstakingly crafted defences were gone, and he let out an animal cry of pain. Gellert was gone. As if in a dream he walked on, the railing cutting into his fingers as he gripped it, though he had no recollection of reaching the end of the pier, and again the grey-green depths of the ocean seemed to call out to him, their siren’s song a balm to his shattered nerves. He’d had the best summer of his life, but like all seasons it had ended, and he had nothing to remember it by except the ache in his chest and the scent of white jasmine flowers that he couldn't escape. His little sister was dead. 

A flick of his fingers vanished the railing and he carefully removed the crown of flowers from his pocket, enlarging it to its original size and laying it down at the edge of the pier. He placed his wand gently on top of the flowers, wondering if the muggles who found it first would be confused or mistrustful of the strange collection of objects he’d left behind. He had known all along that it would end like this. He’d told himself that he wanted to see the new pride of southern England, to watch the spectacle of an opening gala on the bridge stretching nowhere, but it had been a sweet tasting lie. The sky was a sullen grey and the pier was deserted, the mournful screeching of gulls and the song of the sea the only voices he could hear and Albus took one last look back towards the land, a tired smile lighting his features for the first time since he’d been cradling Arianna’s body on his kitchen floor. The lit windows of Brighton glinted, bright topaz in the grey of the surrounding land, but Albus turned his back on the strangely beautiful scene at the other end of the pier. In the end he had chosen, and right or wrong it wouldn’t matter for much longer. Almost as if the action didn’t matter, Albus Dumbledore took another step forwards into nothingness and began to fall. 

As soon as he hit the water Albus knew that he had miscalculated badly. His heart raced with sudden panic and he began to shudder in the cold, treading water frantically as flashes of the things he would miss suddenly began to flood his mind. 

He didn’t want to die. 

Desperately trying to summon magic, he realised with dawning horror that he didn’t have the strength. His body, weakened by the cold temperature and the months of near starvation, had given up, and as he fought his way back to the surface he began to feel the effects of shock. He tried to take a deep breath but a wave crashed over him and he choked on salt water. He was no longer swimming, he realised as panic rose once more in his throat. He was drowning. Whoever said drowning was a peaceful death was a liar, he thought bitterly as he put all of his strength into one last struggle towards the surface. He fought to get back to the air he so desperately needed but his body refused to cooperate, the light of the surface seeming miles away to him as he began, at last to sink, his vision fading in and out as his last hopes drifted further and further from reach. He hadn’t wanted this. It was the last thought he had before blackness took him completely, his world fading away from a dull green murk as the night closed in on him for the last time and he closed his eyes forever.

**Author's Note:**

> The long awaited Albus Dumbledore oneshot is here, hope you liked it. (or at least enjoyed the pain it brought you) I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one, and I'm considering expanding this into a multichapter Albus pov, so if you'd like that tell me, though I warn you it won't get the same attention to detail that my masterfic is getting. Gellert is my main character here, but if enough people like this direction I'll give Albus a three-shot. 
> 
> Any hatred directed my way will be appreciated, so if the only emotion you can muster for me is hatred I'd still like to hear it. 
> 
> :) 
> 
> Happy Reading,  
> Frumion.


End file.
